"when you find this, the crew of the ill-fated ship Horatio ... is no more."

Today a dramatic and tragic message-in-a-bottle story came my way. Janis Blower, writing in the Shields Gazette, tells the story of a bottle that washed up in 1861 in South Shields, downstream from Newcastle upon Tyne in Great Britain. The whole story is here, but below are some excerpts:

The letter, which was dated February of the previous year, began: “Dear Friends, when you find this, the crew of the ill-fated ship Horatio, Captain Jackson, of Norwich, is no more.” It went on to say how the...